Good morning! Editor Nicole MacAdam (@nicole_mac1) here. As prison inmates await a court decision on a 30 per cent cut to their wages, critics are raising concerns about the work program; a key proxy firm is advising against Warren Buffett’s Home Capital deal and Hurricane Harvey is expected to disrupt oil prices for months to come.

Prison inmates are awaiting the results of a court challenge of the Harper government’s decision to cut wages for work done while incarcerated to $1.95 a day or less, reports Claire Brownell

. The inmates’ lawyers argue prisoners should be paid at least the minimum wage of the province where they’re incarcerated. But critics on both the left and right have questions about whether the 37-year-old work program, called CORCAN, should exist at all. CORCAN puts subsidized goods made with below-market labour costs in competition with the private sector, puts taxpayers on the hook for a government-run business venture that posts a loss most years and puts public safety at risk by releasing offenders into the community with limited resources to start a new life without returning to crime. Read the full story here.

Shareholders of Home Capital Group now have another reason to vote against a second placement of shares to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, writes Barry Critchley. Institutional Shareholder Services, one of the two leading proxy advisory firms in North America, has recommended not supporting the $246 million transaction that is slated to be put to Home Capital shareholders at a meeting in early September. An ISS recommendation is considered very important, as a number of institutional shareholders are required to follow the firm’s direction. ISS advised shareholders that “on a cost-benefit analysis, the proposed Berkshire second tranche appears to offer nominal additional reputational and strategic benefits to those already established under the Berkshire first tranche, while dilution cost of the discounted second tranche is substantial.”

The National Energy Board is expected to announce details of hearings to narrow down the route of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, writes Claudia Cattaneo, even as construction is set to start in September in segments where regulatory requirements have been met. Meanwhile, the NEB said in a letter to project proponent Kinder Morgan Canada that it has now met all but one condition – an environmental protection plan — to start construction at its Westridge Marine Terminal in Burnaby. That’s the first location where the company, which has proposed a phased or staggered approach, plans to start building the controversial $7.4 billion project.

The economic impact of Hurricane Harvey’s destruction has been limited on Eastern Canada so far, reports Geoffrey Morgan, but the fallout from the storm is expected to affect oil markets for months. Harvey has battered Houston and the wider region since Friday, forcing thousands from their homes and shutting down many oil refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. Citi Research analyst Ed Morse said in a note that Eastern Canada and Mexico import large volumes of oil from the U.S. and would be “most dramatically impacted by weather-disruptive flows and potential hurricane damage.” This year, Eastern Canadian refineries have processed an average of 300,000 barrels of oil per day from the U.S., accounting for 12.5 per cent of total Canadian consumption, Morse noted.

Apple plans to transform the way people use its next high-end iPhone by eliminating the concept of a home button and making other adjustments to a flagship device that’s becoming almost all screen, according to images of the new device viewed by Bloomberg News and people familiar with the gadget. Apple is preparing three new iPhones for debut next month. One of the models, a new high-end device, packs in enough changes to make it one of the biggest iPhone updates in the product’s decade-long history. With a crisper screen that takes up nearly the entire front, Apple has tested the complete removal of the home button – even a digital one — in favour of new gesture controls for tasks like going to the main app grid and opening multitasking, according to the people and the images.